The Idiot Learns to Read #16: The Scarlet Letter

“The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say it seared Hester’s bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.”

I know that it seemed like it took me a long time to finish this book, but I actually had to put it down for about a month or so to take care of some other things.  It was pretty much a quick read, not too long, not too wordy.

Sometimes you read a book that isn’t very good.  Sometimes you a read book that is well-written but the story kinda sucks.  Sometimes you read a book and you’re like, what the fuck.

Yeah, this is that kind of book.

The Scarlet Letter was written in the 1850s but set in the 1640s, during the height of the Puritans and all their strict beliefs.  It is about a woman who has an adulterous affair and what happens to her and the people around her because of her affair.  To be quite honest, the story was a little bit like something you’d see on Maury Povich.

The story opens and Hester Prynne (our adulteress) is standing on a scaffold in the town square.  She is very obviously pregnant and it’s very obvious that her husband is not the father because it has been rumoured that he might have been lost at sea.  Back in those days women did not have affairs, whether they were married or not.  They did not have babies by men other than their husbands.  As in all societies since the dawn of man, usually it is the women who suffer strict punishments while the men get off scot-free.

So Hester is up on this scaffold and everyone is like, “Who is the baby daddy?”  She absolutely refuses to say.  The reverend, the ministers and all the town elders are interrogating her, trying to figure out who the baby daddy is.  She just won’t say, so they throw her in jail.  She stays in jail the whole time she is pregnant.  When the baby is born they drag her back out to the scaffold and demand to know who the baby’s father is.  Again, she won’t say.

Enter the Scary Old Man, Roger Chillingworth.  Even his name is scary:  Chillingworth.  He is a stranger to the town and he happens to arrive the same moment Hester is up on the scaffold with her bastard baby.  He wants to know what is going on and the townspeople tell him about Hester the Hoe.  Roger Chillingworth says, “You know, I’m a doctor.  Why don’t you let me talk to her.”  Back then they thought everything was somehow medically related.

The town elders allow Roger to talk to Hester alone.  When he goes into the jail cell, Hester is surprised to see him.  Lo and behold, he is her husband!  But get this, he’s like, “Okay, so I’ll talk to the town elders for you and see if I can get you out of jail but don’t tell them I’m your husband.”  What?  Yeah, but for whatever reason Hester agrees to this.  Roger is somehow able to talk to the elders and they release her.

Hester has to wear a giant letter “A” on her chest so that everybody will know that she is an adulteress.  I know it’s symbolism but really, don’t you think that’s a little bit extra?  They live in a small village.  She has a baby.  I think we all know that she is an adulteress.  We don’t need her to wear a large red “A,” but apparently they think it’s necessary.  Of course she is shunned by society.  They make her live on the edge of town by herself.  She is a very good seamstress and that’s how she makes a living.  She can make everything except virgins’ wedding dresses.  *eyeroll*  It’s just so ridiculously unfair.  She didn’t magically have the baby alone.  I know she did not want to name the father, but it’s just too dumb.  I know that I am using my 2011 brain and social mores against 1642 but still…

Let’s talk about the Reverend Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth.  Now you remember that the reverend was among the people on the platform demanding to know who the father of the child was.  Roger is her husband that’s also a doctor that managed to get her out of jail.  Because Roger is new to town he has no where to live so he ends up staying with the Reverend Dimmesdale, a young man who appears to be neglecting his health.  Reverend Dimmesdale is very well respected in the community–after all, he is the reverend.  He always gives very timely sermons that seem to go well with whatever is going on in the village that moment.

Almost immediately you know that something is up with this guy.  He is pretty much the only person to ever visit Hester, and he always does it secretly.  At first, you’re thinking that he doesn’t want to tarnish his good name by being seen in the company of a woman of ill-repute but then you start to realise that he is the father of Hester Prynne’s daughter Pearl.

D’uh!

The middle of the novel started to stagnate a little.  There was a lot going on about the damn scarlet letter Hester had to wear on her chest.  Her daughter is growing up and constantly asks what the letter means.  Pearl is described as this fae like creature because of her parentage.  She is beautiful and flighty like a little bird.  There is even a scene where she acts like she doesn’t know who her mother is when she takes the scarlet letter off.  I think Pearl was even wise enough to know that Reverend Dimmesdale was her father, even though she was only seven years old.

Finally, towards the end of the story Dimmesdale and Hester decide they can’t live like this anymore.  He is in poor health.  She has been wearing that damn letter for seven years.  It’s time to move on.  They make plans to run away together and take Pearl with them.  All this time Roger has been kind of spying on Dimmesdale and he too soon figures out that Dimmesdale is the father.

Something I could not quite understand is why Roger Chillingworth was so bitter.  First of all, when he and Hester were married in Europe, he told her to go on ahead to America and he would follow behind after he concluded his affairs.  She had been living in America for years.  Remember that everyone thought he was dead because too much time had passed.  Back in those days it wasn’t unheard of to be lost at sea.  Yeah, I get that his wife had a baby by another man but he could have easily just walked away from the whole situation the minute he arrived in town and saw that she had a kid.  He didn’t even have to make his presence known to her.  He could have kept it moving.  I guess guys always feel slighted no matter whether was real motivation or not.

Roger decides he is going to stop them going away together.  He has already allowed Dimmesdale to torment himself beyond belief.  It is like he wants this guy to go over the brink.  Hester and Dimmesdale had plans to board a ship right after the new governor is sworn into office, but he is first expected to make a sermon.  At the end of the sermon, he sees Hester and Pearl standing by the scaffold, the scene of their original torment and for whatever insane reason he just jumps onto the scaffold, dragging them with them and announces to all and sundry that he is the father.  Then he rips off his shirt to reveal that he has carved a letter “A” into his chest and has been scarring it since the day Hester was first forced to wear her letter “A.”

I mean, is that melodramatic or what?  To make it even more ridiculous, he dies, presumably from infection of having a fresh, open wound on his chest for seven years.  Roger Chillingworth is pissed.  He was to have his revenge but since Dimmesdale has died, there is nothing he can do to him.  Then Hester and Pearl disappear quietly and now he really has no one to torment.  Roger dies a year after Dimmesdale.  Randomly, he leaves Pearl all of his money, making her the wealthiest heiress in the area.

Years later, Hester returns to her little cottage by the sea but she is without Pearl.  They never really say where she went, but it’s likely she married someone in Europe.  Hester becomes kind of  counselor to the women in the town.  They all realise how they wronged her because of her indiscretion.  They all realise how they too have suffered a mistake and the price they have paid, so they come to her to seek her advice on various issues.  Eventually, years on down the line, Hester dies and she is buried in a new grave next to Dimmesdale’s old grave.

Like I said before, I kept trying to put 2011 into this 1642 tale.  My sensibilities were offended at the fact that she had to walk around with this “A” on her chest and that she had to live on the edge of town, everyone shunning her.  I didn’t like how Dimmesdale never came forward in all that time.  He would have been ridiculed too but probably they would have been forced to marry and then everyone would have forgotten about them eventually.  But that is just like a man for you, never one to take responsibility.  I don’t care if he “suffered in silence.”  Hester suffered openly.

I thought the book was well-written even if it did kind of linger too long on stuff that seemed irrelevant.  Or maybe it was pertinent and I just didn’t understand it.  At any rate, it was a pretty good book.  I’m sorry it took me so long to read it; I just got sidetracked on other things.

I give it a B+

Next I am going to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, since it’s on my reading list for a class.

The Idiot Learns to Read #15: Jane Eyre

Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?  Do you think I am an automaton?–a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup?  Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?  You think wrong!–I have as much soul as you,–and full as much heart!  And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.  I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;–it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,–as we are!

This has easily become one of my favourite books.  It is a story that I knew well but had never actually read.  There are dozens of movie versions available, but I always say, nothing can compare to a book.  Jane Eyre is a love story, but not in the sappy rom-com style.  You aren’t laden with drivel and sugary sweet words, “I love you” every five minutes.  It is torturous.  It is painful.  It is dark.  It is intelligent. 

The story begins with Jane Eyre as a little girl.  Her parents died when she was but an infant, leaving to her live with her bitchy Aunt Reed who doesn’t seem to care for her very much.  Aunt Reed and her three children treat Jane as a poor relation, even though she promised to care for Jane as one of her own.  Instead, she sends Jane to live in a school for orphans.  This school is typical of the time period:  dark, dreary, lonely and full of oppressive religion.  The students are starved, beaten, and mistreated.  Jane’s best friend dies after an outbreak of typhoid at the school.

Jane stays at the school until she is 18, but she desires to see something else of the world.  So far, most of her life she has spent it someplace where people don’t really care for her.  She decides to take out an advertisement in the paper for a new job.  She ends up at Thornfield Hall, and this is where the real story begins. 

The book is not particuarly long and the language is very simple to read, but there is quite a lot going on.  It’s hard to summarise it, and now I know why the various movies I’ve seen based on this book skip over some parts.  Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall to be governess to a little girl Adele.  Jane loves her new job but doesn’t meet her new master until some time later.  When she does finally meet Mr. Edward Rochester, she doesn’t fall immediately in love with him, like how you find in most romance novels.  I like this.  I think he falls in love with her first, while she realises that she is just a governess, a poor one and that it is too ridiculous for her to start dreaming above her station.  Jane is very practical and logical.  She approaches everything in life with sound reasoning. 

For some reason, as I write this, I can’t seem to summon the words to summarise this novel properly.  I think I am not meant to.  This is a novel you must read on your own to get its fullest enjoyment.  You might ask, “Well, how can I know I want to read it, if you don’t tell me what it’s about?”  As I said, it’s a love story with twists and turns, lies and deceit, regrets and misfortune.  Just when you think there might be a happily ever after, there’s something waiting to rain on your parade.  Jane, a resourceful woman, is not one to dwell on woulda, shoulda, coulda and she does what she has to do to preserve her peace of mind and sanity.  Mr. Rochester, the love of her life, is the one who is tortured by the decisions he has made. 

This is not an adventurous tale, but one that makes you ask you the question, “What would I do if I were in love with someone that was forever divided from me?”  Would you move on with your life and try your hardest to forget?  Would you forgive the one you loved if he had deceived you in the worst way?  If he begged you to stay, would you, knowing that you two may never be together in the way that you want?  Could you love someone else after that?

I give Charlotte Bronte an A+.  I am almost torn between this one and her sister’s Wuthering Heights.  That was a great book too.  Next I am going to read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Idiot Learns to Read #13: Madame Bovary

Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings –a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.

This is a sad tale of what happens to people who marry who are not equally yoked.  There are some who are brilliant enough to pass it off, but for the most part, people coming from the opposite ends of life never do well together.  Madame Bovary highlights all the problems of a couple who were entirely ill-suited.

The story starts with a young Charles Bovary finally attending school for the first time.  He’s had an unorthodox childhood, but his mother is determined to see him distinguished in any fashion.  She goes to such great lengths to ensure his education.  He is a young man without much ambition, but because of her machinations he manages to finish school as a mediocre doctor.  He was content to live out his days like that but his mother also wanted him to have an excellent marriage.  She arranges for him to marry a widow.  It would be quite a boring story, the lives of Charles Bovary and his new wife for they are not all interesting, but this wife is not the Madame Bovary we are interested in.

Charles becomes infatuated with the daughter of one of his patients.  The girl is beautiful, unlike anything he has ever seen.  His wife, of course, is jealous, even though she never lays eyes on the girl.  She just knows that her husband is spending all his time on this one patient.  Charles is so middle of the road that he would never dream of stepping out on his wife.  Instead, she becomes ill and dies, leaving Charles free.  Of course, he’s so stodgy and boring that he does wait the suitable mourning period before he begins courting young Emma, a girl who has been educated in a convent. 

When they get married, Emma becomes the Madame Bovary that will captivate you, and eventually disillusion you.  At first, Emma is quite excited to be married and Charles is a devoted husband.  Eventually, however, the days of her marriage seem to run together.  She becomes immediatley unhappy and Charles has no idea why.  She is bored and listless though Charles does everything in his power to amuse her.  She becomes so caught up in her boredom and unhappiness that she makes herself ill.  Charles, who is barely competent as a doctor, hires on another doctor to look after her.  This doctor says the air is what is making Madame Bovary ill and that she should be moved to someplace with more affable air.  Upon hearing this, Emma drinks vinegar to make herself more ill, to persuade Charles to move away from the sleepy little village in which they currently reside.

This is the first evidence you see that points to Emma as a spoiled and wilful woman, uncaring of other people’s feelings  Charles becomes so alarmed that he immediately packs everything up and they move to another town that is more modern. 

That very first day theya rrive in the new town, Emma meets Monsieur Leon.  The two have much in common and it’s evident that they are immediately attracted to one another.  Charles is completely oblivious to all of this.  He thinks Leon is just a polite gentleman to be so kind to his wife. 

Shortly after their arrival in town, Emma and Charles have a baby but you can tell that Emma is not really into the whole pregnancy and motherhood thing.  Charles was quite excited, but Emma seemed distant.  When she was alone, she prayed for a boy because a boy wouldn’t be stuck in the dreary life she was in.  She was extremely disappointed when the child was born female.  To further highlight her disinterest in the child, she took forever in naming the child.  Eventually, they settle on Berthe.

After Berthe’s birth, Emma goes back to her regular mundane life, but slowly realising that she is in love with Leon.  Heretofore, they were merely polite with one another, but she ends up kind of stalking him in a way.  She hangs out her window every time he goes past, trying to figure out where he is going.  She would show up randomly at the house he’s staying at.  Emma would visit the wife of the household in a barely concealed attempt to see Leon.  The more she realises she is in love with Leon the more she realises she hates Charles.  She becomes even more depressed, growing thin and pale.  Charles doesn’t seem to see any of this.  He thinks she is finally settled down and happy now they have a baby.  He doesn’t even notice that Emma is not really that into the baby; in fact, she doesn’t even see the kid.  Emma’s hatred for Charles grows because he doesn’t seem to pay attention to her needs. 

Leon doesn’t make things any better because he also decides that he is in love with Emma.  He sees no point in confessing his love, howeve, because she is married.  It first, it does not enter into his mind to have an affair.  Instead of dealing with his emotions, he decides to pack up for Paris.  When Emma finds out that he is leaving, she sinks into a black depression, leaving Charles completely baffled as to what is wrong with her.

Enter Rodolphe Boulanger.  He is an older man witha large estate near town.  He’s very self-important and arrogant.  In modern times, he’d be called a player.  He has lots of women all over the place and the moment he sees Emma, he decides that she needs to be his next conquest.  He does whatever he can to put himself in her line of sight, and eventually she does take notice of him.  She likes him because he is interesting and worldly, everything Charles is not.  She falls so easily into his trap.  Charles is so stupid that he doesn’t even see what is going on.  Rodolphe basically courts her right under his nose.  Charles even condones some of Rodolphe’s activities.  Rodolphe randomly shows up one day asking if Emma would like to go horeseback riding.  Oh, Emma doesn’t have a horse.  Oh, I just happen to have one right here.  Oh, you go on, honey.  You have a great time.  I feel sorry for Charles.  He doesn’t even know he’s stupid. 

They day they are out riding, Rodolphe and Emma sleep together.  Now Emma is in love.  She is sneaking out everyday to be with him.  She doesn’t care who sees her.  She doesn’t care about the consquences.  She becomes so bold and reckless that Rodolphe has to tell her to slow down.  She’s getting out of control and she could damage both their reputations.  This is at a time when affairs were carried on in the most discreet fashion and the slightest smudge against a lady’s name could ruin her forever.  It’s like she doesn’t even care though. 

It’s sad because Emma is so head over heels in love with Rodolphe but he’s like whatever about her.  To him, she’s just another chick.  She’s got it into her head that they were meant to be together, and she wants to run off with him, leave Charles.  Rodolphe doesn’t like the sound of that.  In order to reason with her, he asks her, “What about your kid?”  Oh, we’ll take her with us.  The thought of taking care of a woman and her baby is sickening to Rodolphe but he doesn’t say anything to Emma quite yet.  Emma concocts this wild plan that Rodolphe only half-heartedly agrees to.  After she leaves their love next, Rodolphe decides that he’s had quite enough of this whole affair and it’s time for him to move on.  He writes Emma a very long letter basically explaining to her that running away together is not really that great an idea.  He ends it with a “let’s just be friends.”  He thinks the letter will make her see sense and reason, but it’s the type of letter that would drive a woman crazy, especially since she is butt-crazy in love with him. 

Instead of bringing the letter himself, he sends his servant along with a basket of apricots.  Naturally, when Emma reads the letter she goes practically insane.  She starts crying and carrying on.  Charles has no idea what’s going on with her.  He is so stupid that he thinks the apricots have made her ill.  She carries on so much that she falls into a feverish delerium for months.  It takes her months to recover and Charles becomes more doting than ever.  They have begun to fall into financial troubles but he says nothing of this to her. 

She does get better, and Charles takes her into town to see a show.  While there, she runs into Leon.  Their loves is immediatley renewed upon seeing one another and eventually they do begin a real love affair.  Emma lies to Charles and tells him that she is taking piano lessons.  But like all things, this also plays itself out.  Emma wants to spend more and more time with Leon.  He thinks she’s being reckless.  People are starting to notice things.  She is staying out all night, and one night she doesn’t even come home.  This is a thing unheard of.  Charles just doesn’t have a clue what is happening.  Even Leon’s boss says something.  Someone writes to his mother and she warns him about taking up with a married woman in this fashion.

Leon has to break it off, but before he can do this the financial troubles of the Bovarys catch up with them.  All this time, Emma has been spending wildly.  Borrowing money from one person to pay another.  She has to have the most fashionable hats and gowns.  She has to have silver and Chinese fans.  She has to have everything because she thinks these things will make her happy.  Charles had always told her that she had to be a little less free with the money but she never paid any attention to this.  One day, one of her debtors finally comes to her and says he wants his money:  8000 francs.  Back then, that’s a lot of money.  Emma tries desperately to get the money from anybody she can but she has borrowed so much that no one will lend her anything.  She asks Leon and he just doesn’t have that kind of money. 

She accuses him of not loving her.  They quarrel badly and this is pretty much the last time they see each other.  In a final act of desperation, Emma runs into Rodolphe and asks him for the money.  If he would have had it, he would have given it to her but he doesn’t.  She also tells him that he never loved her.  Meanwhile, Charles is still clueless about what is happening.  He has his own debts but knows nothing of Emma’s serious debt.  He doesn’t even know about the affairs with Leon and Charles. 

One night, Emma comes home, looking wild and crazy.  She has swallowed arsenic.  Charles does whatever he can, calling all the doctors but nothing can be done.  Emma has killed herself.  It was really quite sad because Charles just didn’t know what had tormented her so.  He didn’t know why he could never make her happy.  Even after her death he tries to please her.  He has an extravagant funeral arranged for her that everyone tries to talk him out of.  Emma’s debtors wait a suitable period but they come around for the money once more.  Charles ends up completely destitute, still madly in love with Emma and blind to all of her faults.

One day, he finds a letter that Rodolphe had written to Emma.  Even then Charles refused to believe it.  He tells himself that it must have been a platonic love.  After all, he loved her so, everybody else should love her just like he did.  He also learns of Leon’s marriage shortly after Emma’s death.  Charles says to himself, “How happy Emma would be to know this.”  It’s like he purposely refused to see what was in front of his own nose this whole time.  It’s just so depressing.  You just want to shake some sense into him.  You want to slap Emma. 

Charles does what he can to pay off all his debts but he has become reclusive from society.  He just cannot get over Emma’s death.  By the time everything is paid he has very little money left.  He still has his daughter to take care of but in his selfishness and grief, he doesn’t do what he should have done until it was too late.  Charles dies and Berthe goes to live with his mother, but she died the same year.  Berthe goes to live with an aunt but the aunt is too poor to take care of Berthe, so she sends the little girl to work in a cotton factory. 

This is the last you hear of the Bovarys.

The story was utterly depressing, but not in a way that I felt sad for myself.  I felt sorry for these people.  Emma was so childish, so immature, so petty.  Charles treated her like a princess but she treated him like dirt.  She even treated her lovers like garbage.  She was clingy and needy, reviling them with her stalkerish behaviour.  Rodolphe was a player but Leon loved her until he couldn’t give her what she needed:  money.  In the end, I didn’t feel sorry for her.  I felt sorry for Charles because he just wanted to be an average middle-of-the-road guy.  He didn’t desire for things beyond his reach.  He thought he had everything:  a career, a beautiful wife, a lovely daughter.  But he was so blind to everything around him.  Maybe he didn’t want open his eyes and see that he really had nothing.  In the end, I couldn’t feel sorry for him either.  Once Emma was gone, he had one responsibility and that was Berthe.  That’s who we should all feel sorry for.  Even though she is a minor character in the story, she’s the one who suffered from stupidity of her parents.

I give Mr. Flaubert an A for this story.  It was a little wordy in parts, but it was a fast read.  I could have gone through it much faster had I not been so busy at work. 

Next I will read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

The Idiot Learns to Read #11: My Antonia

When the sun was dropping low, Antonia came up the big south draw with her team. How much older she had grown in eight months! She had come to us a child, and now she was a tall, strong young girl, although her fifteenth birthday had just slipped by. I ran out and met her as she brought her horses up to the windmill to water them. She wore the boots her father had so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and his old fur cap. Her outgrown cotton dress switched about her calves, over the boot-tops. She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailor’s. Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees that draught-horse neck among the peasant women in all old countries.

I didn’t think I would like this book.  I’m not really much into westerns and prairie stories.  Who wants to read about a country boy growing up on a farm and then in some small pokey little town in the midwest?

It turned out to be riveting and I flew through the pages quickly because suddenly I had a vested interest in this boy’s life.  Despite the title My Antonia is really about a young boy who moves to Nebraska from Virginia after his parents die.  He goes to live with his grandparents on their farm, just around the way from some Bohemian people, the Shimerdas.  They have a daughter, Antonia.  From the day he first meets her, Jim has a certain love affair with this girl who is a few years older than him.  He is 10 years old when they first meet.

They spend their growing up years playing together out on the prairie.  It was all very sweet and innocent, but he can’t help the way he feels about her.  She treats him like a child, but they have an intense friendship.  Later, Jim’s grandparents decide they are too old to maintain a farm and they move into town.  Jim doesn’t get to see Antonia much anymore until she too later moves to town to get a job.

This book highlights what happens when there are missed opportunities and unspoken desires.  By the time Antonia comes to town, she is grown and Jim is still in high school.  Of course, he’s too young to really profess his love for her.  He hates how she goes running around with boys her own age, but there’s nothing really he can do about it.  By the time Jim comes of age, he goes off to college and leaves Antonia behind.

While away at school he meets up with another girl he grew up with, Lena Lindgard and for a little while I thought it was her that he would marry, but I soon realised that she was just a chapter in his life.  The two even spent a bit of time talking about Antonia.  Eventually Jim leaves even Lena to go east to attend law school.

Many years later, Jim returns to his small hometown to find that Antonia has married and now has 10 children.  He wasn’t bitter or disappointed.  It’s just that their lives took them in two different directions.  It was never meant to be, maybe.  Perhaps it was the difference in their ages, the difference in their upbringing.  It could have been anything.  Whatever it was, they never get together.

I really enjoyed this book.  The language was easy without being dumbed-down.  I felt each and every character as if I knew these people.  Jim had a way of really putting his thoughts forward.  I give Willa Cather an A+

Next up is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.  This is sure to be a heavy read.  I don’t know how I feel about this.  I’ll let you know.

The Idiot Learns to Read #9: The Secret Garden

Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us.

What an utterly delightful and charming story.  Written for children, this is a wonderful tale of the magic of friendship.  It was a short, easy read that was so adorable that I couldn’t put it down because I just had to know what happened next.  Sometimes kids’ things can be trite and lame, but since this is actual literature, written during a time when writing was actually writing and people read for entertainment, the story is not silly or otherwise lame.

It is about a little girl, Mary, who had been living in in colonial India until her parents died of cholera.  She was a disliked, horrid little brat who was used to servants waiting upon her.  She was so spoiled and lazy that she could hardly dress herself.  After the death of her parents, she is sent to live in England with her uncle.

Her uncle is a sad case. His wife died 10 years ago and he hadn’t yet gotten over it.  He had a son, Colin, who was an invalid since birth.  Well, actually, he wasn’t an invalid.  He was just a hypochondriac.  His father had a slight hump in his back so it was widely believed that Colin would also have a hunch in his back since he was a difficult birth (which is how the mother died).  He was always very sickly and in those times, instead of doing things to be more healthful, it was widely believed that if you just laid in bed and took a bunch of pills you could probably be cured of whatever ails you.  So Colin pretty much laid in bed his whole life, crying and whining about everything, believing that he was going to die simply because the doctors had told him so.

Meanwhile, Mary has been told to amuse herself and not to bother anybody so she spends most of her time wandering around the big old house and the grounds surrounding.  She finds an abandoned garden that belonged to the wife of her uncle before she died.  The garden, Mary believes, is enchanted.  Before she came to England, she didn’t like to do anything.  It was always very hot in India so she just laid around and demanded her servants to wait on her.  Now, in the garden she likes to run and play and do fun things.  She meets a neighbourhood boy and the two decide to plant things in the abandon garden to make it pretty again.

Soon after, Mary and Colin meet each other and she doesn’t feel sorry for him at all.  She gets tired of his whining and crying, and realising that he reminds her very much of how she used to be, she decides that nothing is wrong with Colin at all and that he just wants attention.  So Colin, Mary and the neighbourhood boy start hanging out in the secret garden and they discover all kinds of wonderful things.  The beauty in making things grow appears to be a kind of magic for them.  Instead of being an ugly, disagreeable child, Mary transform into a pretty young lady.  Colin is suddenly “healed” by the magic of the garden.  Prior to all this, he’d been confined in a wheelchair because everybody thought he was going to get a hump in his back and die. Being in the garden makes him want to run, jump and play, something he has never done before.

In the end, the children all learn something about themselves.  Colin and Mary had never had any friends before, they were both such frightful, horrible little children who thought themselves better than everyone.  They learned a great deal from the neighbourhood boy who was much poorer than they were.  They all learn how to be friends and to grow things.  They learn how to take a delight in what’s around them.  Most importantly, they learn how to stop being so self-sorry.

I really enjoyed this book and it was a welcome change after the last three novels where everybody died in the end.

Next, in honour of Hallowe’en, I’ll read Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The Idiot Learns to Read #8: Uncle Tom’s Cabin

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved, – but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!

I can’t believe I read this book so fast.  I read the first nine chapters inside of a few hours and blazed through the last 10 chapters just now here at work.  I couldn’t put it down, it was so riveting.

A lot of people have heard of the story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I’m sure they’ve heard the phrase “Uncle Tom,” but I bet very few people nowadays have read the book outside of a school assignment.  I’m ashamed to say that I was among those people until about an hour ago.

If you don’t know, this story is about slavery and its ill effects, Christianity and duty to it, as well as the strength of the human spirit to endure even those abominable of situations.  As I just mentioned, I read through the first nine chapters so quickly because the writing sucked me in the story.  I’m not one to be teary-eyed or overly emotional, but I couldn’t help but feel depressed after those first nine chapters.

Of course, we’ve all had our history lessons and we know about slavery, where it came from and where it went.  We know about all the evils slave owners committed.  We know the devastating effects slavery had on Africans tricked into a free boat ride through the nineteenth century.  I’m sure we’ve all read a few books and seen a few movies, as I have, but I don’t think any of them affected me as much as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  I can’t precisely say what it is about this book that made me sad, I just know that it was well-written, thought-provoking and heart-wrenching.

It is about Tom, of course, and the people that came into contact with me.  Tom is a slave, but more importantly Tom is a Christian who never, ever, ever allows his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to be shaken.  It didn’t matter what anybody did to him, no matter what crimes and miseries committed against him, he never lost his faith in the Lord.  His first owners were kind and reasonable people, if you can call slaveowners such.  The Missus didn’t like slavery but women in those times only had fractional more freedom than slaves, so her opinion didn’t count.  The Master greatly appreciated the work that Tom did but in the end, he owed a lot of debt and was forced to sell Tom.  Tom was so good a slave that he would fetch a high price. The family promised that if they ever had the money they would do their best to buy Tom back.  There is decency in this family and you know that if they had the means they would keep their word.  There is no hidden agenda in this particular family.

The worst thing for slaves in the northern-most part of the south was to be sold “down the river” to a plantation, and that is precisely where Tom went.  An angel, so to speak, intervened.  A young girl on the same boat as Tom saw him for his good Christian sold and persuaded her father to buy him.  Tom’s new master was also kindly, even if he was a little negligent and thoughtless.  He treated Tom well and Tom was always there for him in his darkest hour.   When New Master’s daughter dies, Tom is a fount of strength and Christian wisdom for him.  Tom cares about everybody’s soul and he was most concerned over his new master’s soul.  His new master always meant to repay Tom for his kindness and wisdom, but New Master is a little lazy and never thinks of anything until the last minute.   He wanted to give Tom his freedom, but he never got around to it and ended up getting killed in a bar fight.

New Master’s wife was a shiftless bitch and when everybody reminded her that her husband meant to give Tom his freedom, she complained that she would need the money she could get from selling him.  Tom and the rest of the servants ended up at a slave warehouse to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.  Tom ends up in the hands of a disgusting, cruel plantation owner who beats him mercilessly.  This new owner doesn’t like Tom because Tom never gets mad.  Tom hangs on to his faith in the Lord.  Tom does what he’s told and doesn’t complain.  The new master wants Tom to get mad like the rest of the slaves so he can have an excuse to beat him, but since Tom doesn’t behave like everyone else this just makes the slaveowner even more upset.  So he ends up beating Tom just because he’s mad that Tom is not like everyone else.

He tries his damnedest to get Tom to recant his faith in the Lord but Tom is unshakeable.  Even though Tom realises that he will never see his family again, he just won’t let go.  If I had been Tom, I would have been a lunatic.  I would have killed the plantation owner.  I would have run away.  I would have killed myself.

In addition to Tom’s story, there is also the story of George.  George is another slave but he’s extremely smart and well-read.  He makes a lot of money for his master working in a factory and he’s so smart that he invents some machine to cut down on the workload.  The master is jealous of George’s intelligence.  He thinks George invented this machine to get out of working.  Even though George makes a lot of money for him, the master decides that George should work in the field instead. George can’t take it anymore, so he runs off to Canada with his wife and son.

There are also all the stories of slaves who were beaten to death by insensitive, merciless masters.  And the stories of white people who find it amusing that some people think that the slaves were actual human beings with feelings and emotions.  You hear from slaveowners and the people whose business it is to buy, sell and track slaves up and down the river.  They talk about how “upset” the mothers get when their sons and daughters are sold away from them.  They think it’s funny that someone would be so attached to their offspring.  They talk about how to sweet talk the wives into not being so upset that their husbands got sold.

And then there are all the slaveowners who think they are actually doing good to their slaves.  Sure, they are properly clothing them, feeding them and all that, but that’s not enough.  They say, “Don’t I do right by them?”  But then treat them like they are less than a person.

It was just so depressing, but there was some happiness.  George and his family got away to Canada, and then he went to be educated in France.  Eventually they all went back to Africa.  Tom’s first family freed all of their slaves.  And all the poor souls that you come across in this book eventually do end up in a better place, even if it had to be heaven.

They say this book was a flashpoint for the Civil War.  At the time it was written there were already large groups of Christian abolitionists.  They felt you couldn’t really be a Christian and own another person at the same time.  More and more northern whites (and some southerners) assisted runaway slaves to Canada and other places of freedom.  It was a volatile time because the law was not favourable.

Whether you are white or black, if you call yourself any kind of human being, you should read this book.  Out of everything I have read so far, this one has been the best, even if it was the saddest.

Now, I think I’ll go on to something a little more light-hearted.  On to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

The Idiot Learns to Read #7: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter. Alas! What is the use of saying that? That which is not beautiful has no right to exist; beauty loves only beauty; April turns her back on January. Beauty is perfect, beauty can do all things, beauty is the only thing which does not exist by halves. The raven flies only by day, the owl flies only by night, the swan flies by day and by night.

Where do I even begin?  First of all, instead of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo should have called this A Brief History of Paris Plus a Long-Winded Description of Notre-Dame, A Whole Bunch of Side Stories, Oh, and a Tale About a Deformed Oprhan. Because that’s what this really was.  I don’t know whether to love or hate the story.  When I first began reading it, I definitely hated the story.  A few more chapters in and I was truly hating it.  I almost abandoned it like I did Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.  By the end, however, I was utterly riveted.  What happened?  Let me tell you.

This story is about a really fucked up love triangle and what happens when you become obsessed with something you cannot have.  It is also about man’s passion for things that look good on the outside and his abhorrence for anything that is ugly, despite the beauty within.  But before we can even get to that point, we have to go through a whole bunch of other crap.

The story opens up with a big party.  It’s some festival or other.  This is Paris and you know they have a festival for everything.  “It’s Tuesday, let’s PAARTAAAY!!!”  It’s some kind of freak show party, though.  All the ugly, weird deformed looking freaks get together and the townspeople elect one of them to be the Pope of Fools.  It’s supposed to be an honour but really you know they’re just laughing at you.  Anyway, Quasimodo is elected Pope of Fools.

The party would have been interesting except Victor Hugo chose to be long-winded about it.  He described everything, every little thing, in super agonising detail.  He also outlined every conversation held by every attendant at the party.  I went through pages and pages of description and conversation between random people who appeared to have absolutely no relevance to anything.  The further I got into the book, the more I realised that those people I was forced to listen to would never make an additional appearance.  I suffered through this for several days.

The next set of books (Victor Hugo wrote the story in books–11 in total, with several chapters each) gets even worse.  You would think the story would then pick up.  Oh no.  Victor Hugo proceeds to give us an intimate history of Paris and Notre-Dame, including key events and important figures’ influence on the infamous church.  And when I say detailed, I mean detailed.  Everything from the weight of each stone to how many cracks in said stone to the number of cross beams holding up the rafters and blah blah blah blah.  I was cross-eyed by the time I finished the description of Notre-Dame.  And what’s next?

Oh, a description of the Place de Greve, this square near Notre-Dame where they used to hang people.  Oh my God, I could not sit through another lengthy discussion, so I started skipping chapters.  I’m sorry, Mr. Hugo, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.  It was at this point that I almost gave up on the whole book altogether.  I skipped ahead a little bit to see if there was an actual story to read, or if this was going to be strictly historical documentation, but I did see something that was interesting so I decided to keep on with it.

I’m glad I did but there was still a little more agony to get through.  Time for the back story.  Oh man, the back story.  At first glance the back story does seem as irrelevant as everything else I had previously read, but I came to learn that those back stories would tie neatly into a nice little bow, with everything explained.  It is here you learn about all the significant characters of the story:

The Evil Priest
The Evil Priest’s brother
Quasimodo
Captain Phoebus
Esmeralda
The Sacked Nun
Esmeralda’s Sorta Kinda Husband

It’s just that Victor Hugo has a bizarre way of giving you the back story.  You know the Evil Priest is important, because he’s evil, d’uh, and he sets everything into motion.  But who cares about the Sacked Nun, or the Evil Priest’s brother, for that matter?  What do these people have to do with anything?  And the way they are brought into the story… it’s so odd.  Three gossiping old women are randomly talking about the Sacked Nun, but you kinda don’t know they’re talking about her and you have no idea why she is important.  It seems so random, and then later on you get this moment, like, “OMG!!! The Sacked Nun is…..”

I’m not going to tell you.  Read the damn book yourself.

So what the hell is this story about?

Remember what I was saying about the fucked up love triangle and what happens when you try to possess something that is not yours?  Yeah, it’s all that.  So….

Quasimodo is a horrific little orphan that nobody wanted.  He has one eye.  He has a huge hunchback.  He’s got frightful red hair (back then red hair was associated with the devil).  He spoke only gibberish until someone took pity on him and adopted him.  He was the bell-ringer at Notre-Dame and because of this, he is mostly deaf.

The Evil Priest is the one who adopted Quasimodo.  In the beginning, he wasn’t evil.  He seemed like a nice guy, a little cold and distant, but still most people thought highly of him.

Esmeralda is the beautiful gypsy girl.  She’s precisely the sort of woman that everybody either loves or hates.  All the men love her because she is beautiful and the women hate her because she is beautiful.  No one loves Esmeralda more than the Evil Priest.  No one hates Esmeralda more than the sacked nun.

Everything jumps off when the Evil Priest sees Esmeralda dancing somewhere.  He is so transfixed that he becomes immediately obsessed with her.  He tells Quasimodo to kidnap her on his behalf.  Quasimodo, who will do anything for the Evil Priest, goes to do his bidding but in attempting to kidnap the beautiful gypsy girl, he is thwarted by the handsome Captain Phoebus.  Esemeralda is naturally terrified of Quasimodo.  I mean, who wouldn’t be.  He’s atrocious and it is human nature to to be horrified by things that are ugly.  It’s also in our nature to be enamoured by things that are beautiful, no matter what ugliness that beauty may hide.

Because Captain Phoebus saves Esmeralda, she is immediately in love with him.  Quasimodo is arrested and the Evil Priest basically throws him under the bus.  “I ain’t tell him to kidnap that girl!”  They throw Quasimodo into a public jail so that people can walk past him and laugh at him and throw stuff at him.  It’s a hot day and he’s begging for water, and even though he tried to harm her, Esmeralda is the only person who feels sorry for him.  She brings him something to drink and because of this he falls in love with her.

So Esmeralda and Captain Phoebus are all in love and it’s great and everything, but the Evil Priest has not forgotten about her.  Every time he sees her, he gets crazier and crazier.  The stuff he thinks about her is actually quite creepy.  Through nefarious actions, the Evil Priest finds out that Phoebus is supposed to be meeting with Esmeralda.  Evil Priest wants to meet her too and he makes a deal with Phoebus so they can all hang out.

Instead of hanging out, somehow Phoebus gets stabbed, Esmeralda gets blamed and the Evil Priest disappears.  The police tell Esmeralda that Phoebus is dead so now she has to go on trial.  Because she’s a gypsy, they automatically assume that she is a witch and they torture her to get her to confess.  She ends up confessing even though she didn’t do anything.

While she is in jail awaiting execution, the Evil Priest comes to her to confess his undying love for her.  She is absolutely repulsed.  He is the author of all her misery.  Every time something bad happens to her it is because of something he did.  She didn’t even know it at the time but she finally figures it all out.  She tells him under no circumstances would she ever, in her life, have anything to do with him.  He tells her that she is about to be executed, but she doesn’t care because she thinks Phoebus is dead.

On the day of her execution she discovers that Phoebus is NOT dead.  He was in the crowd waiting to see her get hanged.  He didn’t even know that she had been arrested.  And anyway, he didn’t even give a damn because he was about to marry someone of his own kind.  See what I mean about beauty hiding an ugly heart?  He is basically standing there while his supposed one true love is about to get executed and because he is standing with his new hoe, he’s like, “Oh, I don’t know her like that.”  He didn’t even speak up when he found that she was to be hanged because she allegedly stabbed him to death.  He could have at least said, “Well, since I’m not dead… everything is cool.”  But he didn’t.  What a loser.

Meanwhile, Quasimodo has never forgotten how kind Esmeralda was to him and how jacked up the Evil Priest is.  He also witnesses what a loser Phoebus is.  He decides to save her.  Right when she is about to get hanged, he swoops down out of the church, snatches her up ad brings her back to Notre-Dame for sanctuary.  Back then, you could hide in a church and nobody could do anything to you because the church was a safe place.

Both Phoebus and the Evil Priest did not witness this and they both think Esmeralda is dead.  The Evil Priest is all depressed because he loves Esmeralda so much and he is the one that sent her to her death.  He blames everyone but himself, including her, as the author of all hi miseries.  Apparently, he thought that if she were dead, he would no longer be on fire with passion like he was.  Priests were supposed to be virginal and free of lustful thoughts.  Every time he sees her he just can’t help himself.  It really is quite disturbing.

He goes away for a little while but once he returns to Notre-Dame, he finds out that Quasimodo has been hiding her inside the church.  He becomes even more jealous and enraged.  It was one thing for him to be jealous of the handsome Phoebus but ugly ass Quasimodo?  It’s even more outrageous.  Once more, Evil Priest tries to go to Esmeralda but she is like, “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!”

Fine.  If I can’t have you, no one can.

The Evil Priest sets off a dangerous set of events that ends up in a huge battle in front of Notre-Dame.  A bunch of people end up dead.  One last time he tries to reason with Esmeralda but she is still obsessed with Captain Phoebus who doesn’t even have the time of day for her. Quasimodo tries desperately to save her but his valiant attempts fail.

In the end, the Sacked Nun, the Evil Priest’s brother, the Evil Priest and Esmeralda all end up dead.  Phoebus gets married.  And as for Quasimodo, well, nobody knows what happened to him.

It was a good story, Mr. Hugo, but I wish we didn’t have to go to Tibet to get to California.

Next up is Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Normally, I like to do long, short, long, short but I’m plunging into another long novel because this is what my book club is reading next.

The Idiot Learns To Read #4 Wuthering Heights

After suffering through Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, I had challenged Emily Bronte not to irritate me with a useless story that made no sense.  She answered my challenge in spades!

Wuthering Heights, I cannot even describe how I feel about this book.  It is excellent.  It was so good that I could scarcely put it down.  I read it in about two days.  Friday, there wasn’t much to do at work, so I spent the whole of the day trying to get through the book before the weekend.

What is it about?  It’s about love, unrequited love, the madness of love, about the things that love makes you do.  It’s also about revenge and how it can fully consume you until you’re so spent that there’s nothing left of you but the unpalatable taste of your own vengeance.

This is the story of Catherine and Heathcliff, two lovers that never were.  He was a beggar boy her father had picked up off the street.  The father brought Heathcliff home and raised him as a son, much to the annoyance of the son he already had, Hindley.  Naturally, Hindley was jealous of the attention his father paid to this strange looking gypsy child.  Catherine adored Heathcliff.  They were the same age.  They played together, but when they grew up, it was determined that they were quite unsuitable for each other.  Heathcliff was a gypsy with no last name, no money and no position.  Catherine would be a great lady.  Even though she loved Heathcliff, she knew a marriage between them would not be permitted, nor would it work out.  Instead, she married her neighbour, Edgar, with the foolish notion that Edgar would pay for Heathcliff’s education, so that he could make something of himself.  But Edgar was also jealous of Heathcliff, because he saw that he really had Catherine’s heart.  After Catherine’s father dies, Hindley inherits and pretty much turns Heathcliff out into the streets.  He runs away to make his fortune, thinking that Catherine did not really love him.  Three years later, he returns with money, and nobody knows how he acquired his riches.

The first part of the story has to do with Catherine and Heathcliff’s love for each other.  Catherine is young and silly, with her head in the clouds, but she really does love him.  She just wants to be secure in her future.  This part of the story also deals with intense jealousies.  Hindley is jealous of Heathcliff because he is stronger, more attractive and everybody seems to like him much better.  Edgar is also jealous of Heathcliff because Catherine loves him.  Both Hindley and Edgar assume that their money and position would be enough, but it is Heathcliff that Catherine adores the most.  They both try their hardest to humiliate Heathcliff, but one day, he would have the greatest revenge against them all.

The second part of the story is really the most devastating.  In the beginning, you’re in love with Heathcliff too.  He is such a sad hero that you can’t help but to love him because of his affection for Catherine.  In the latter half of the tale, however, his need for vengeance changes him and you can’t see him through rose-coloured glasses any longer.  It’s almost as if you don’t even know who he is.  He destroys himself and everyone around him because he can’t get over the way they treated him as a boy.  I felt sorry for him, but it was like with each chapter, he sunk to a new low and in the end I couldn’t even pity him.  I had to hate him like everyone else did.

He destroyed Catherine’s brother and the brother’s child, by stealing the family inheritance.  He destroys Edgar’s sister, Isabella by pretending to love her, marrying her and then abusing her.  She runs away and has his child, then dies soon after.  He destroys Catherine by constantly interfering in her marriage with Edgar.  Edgar and Catherine constantly argue over Heathcliff until she finally admits that she never loved Edgar, only married him for his money and security.  Catherine has a little girl Cathy, but on her deathbed she blamed Heathcliff for putting her heart into so much turmoil.  She finally tells him that she has loved him all along, but it is too late to save this poor bastard.

Heathcliff also destroys his own son, Linton.  The kid was always a very sickly child and Heathcliff hated him because he was the child of his wife, Isabella, who is the sister of Edgar, the man who married his forever love Catherine.  See how twisted and convoluted that is?  Linton is far removed from the situation but Heathcliff doesn’t care.  When Edgar dies leaving behind Cathy (Catherine’s child), Heathcliff forces her to marry Linton.  And he does this only so that he can control Edgar’s property (something to do with weird English law).  So now he controls both the properties and inheritances of the two people he hated the most, Edgar and Hindley.  The two who treated him with such derision when he was boy and kept him from Catherine.

Everyone is living in such abject misery:  Heathcliff, Cathy, Hareton, and Linton, who eventually dies because he was never strong and healthy in his life.  I have to wonder if this is what Heathcliff actually intended, for everyone to be completed dejected and miserable.  They are living in the house, depressed and gloomy, no life and he lords control over them like some tyrant.  All for the love of Catherine, which he was forever denied.  The woman has been dead a few years and he is still hellbent on vengeance.  Get over it already!  He is so obsessed that he starts hallucinating, imagining that he sees her ghost around the estate.  He claims that she is haunting him from the grave.  Everyone is trying to talk some sense into him, but he just refuses to listen.

Finally, Cathy explains to Hareton how Heathcliff cheated him out of his inheritance.  She also teaches him to read and write because Heathcliff wouldn’t allow him to be brought up properly as befitting his station.  I guess that was her way of getting back at him for all the trouble he caused.  After that, I think the fight just went out of Heathcliff.  He looks around him and sees that after all that conniving and manipulation, he still doesn’t have the one thing he has always wanted:  Catherine’s love.

And then he just dies.

I’m sure for the survivors it is like a black rain cloud being lifted.  Like being let out of a dark prison, they are finally free of this monstrosity.  It really is such a miserable tale, but it’s so good, so wonderfully written.  You are sucked into the whole thing from the very start.  It’s like you have to know how it ends.  After so much darkness, you hope that there is a light at the end.

They say that Emily Bronte’s story was not well-received when it was first written.  I’m sure everybody likes a happy ending, but life is not really like that.  This is a story about real life.  Sometimes you don’t get what you want, you don’t get what you deserve and it just leaves you so bitter inside.  That is reality for some people.

Next, I’m reading Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.  I’ve read this one before, back in eighth grade, but I only have a vague recollection of what this is about.

The Idiot Learns To Read #3 The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James… what a total waste of time.  What is this story about?  Why did I spend almost three weeks trying to get through Mr. James’ wordy nonsensical rambling?  Is this supposed to be a ghost story?  Am I supposed to take something away from this drivel?  I don’t even know what the hell it was about.  I don’t even know what happened in the end.  If I didn’t have such a headache just trying to get through the damn thing, I’d try to re-read it so I can figure out what the hell I’ve been reading these past three weeks.

It took me so long to get through this short story because the writing was just so long-winded and intricate.  Here is an example of what I’ve been suffering.

At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, but within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable moods.

Seriously!  I am a fan of eloquent speech, but this is just beyond over the top and the entire story was written like this.  I had to read aloud just so I wouldn’t confuse myself.  At any rate, I’m through bitching about Henry James’ writing.

Let’s talk about the actual story.  Basically, it’s about a woman who is a governess to two young children.  The boy was recently expelled from school and neither the school nor the boy would say exactly why he had been kicked out.  The kids’ parents are dead and now they’re in the care of their uncle who made it perfectly clear that he is not interested in knowing anything about the kids.

So the governess is in the country with the kids and everything is going wonderfully until she starts seeing two unidentified people wandering around the estate.  Nobody else seems to be doing anything about these two strange people, so the governess asks the maid, “Who are they?”  The maid seems all scared and weirded out, but she explains that the former governess and her boyfriend had died of unusual circumstances.  According the description the governess made, it sounded like she had just described the old governess and her boyfriend.  So the new governess is like, “Okay, I must be crazy.’

For about 15 chapters, she is rambling on about whether these people exist or not.  Does anybody else see these “ghosts” or is she the only lunatic.  She asks the children and the children just stare at her in that weird child-like way, like whatever, bitch, we don’t know what you’re talking about.  The maid is apparently simple minded and superstitious and doesn’t want to answer any questions, so the governess resumes rambling on for another five chapters.

Then one day, they’re all outside and the governess sees the old governess.  She’s like, “Oh my God, there she is!  Can’t you guys see her?”  The little girl gets scared and says that she never wants to see the new governess ever again.  Then she gets sick so the governess tells the maid to take the little girl to see her uncle, even though the uncle said he never wanted to see or hear about the children.  So the maid and the little girl leave, and now the new governess and the little boy are still in the house.

So, this whole time the governess never knew why the boy had been kicked out of school.  She didn’t want to ask him because… actually, I have no idea why she didn’t want to ask him… Right before the little girl got sick, the governess was going to send a letter to their uncle, but the little boy had stolen the letter to see if she had written anything bad about him.  She asks the little boy, “Did you steal my letter?”  The boy admits it, so the governess assumes that he must have been stealing at school and that’s why he got kicked out.  The boy says he wasn’t stealing, he was “saying things.”  But he never exactly says what he’s been saying, so … I don’t know either.

While they’re talking about being expelled from school, the governess sees the old governess’s boyfriend through the window.  She freaks out, starts screaming about how they aren’t going to take the children away from her.  The boy is like, “What?!?  What?  I don’t see anything!”  But she clutches the boy to her chest, so he can never really look out the window to see the boyfriend.

And then the boy is dead.

Yeah, he’s dead.

No explanation on how he died.  Was he scared to death?  Did the governess kill him?  What happened after that?  Did the boyfriend come in the house?  Were they really ghosts? Was the governess crazy?  Was the little boy crazy?  Were they all crazy?

Who even knows because that’s how the damn book ended.

Yeah, three weeks to have the book end so shittily, and this book is like.. a must read.  Seriously?  Who decided that?

You get an F-, Mr. James.  Thanks a lot.

I’ll be starting Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte shortly.  I’m warning you right now, Emily, you better bring your A game because I am not in the mood to sit through another stupid ass book.

The Idiot Learns to Read #1: The List

A few years ago, I was in Columbia Mall in the Borders bookstore, and like most bookstores, it’s all set up by genre and whatnot.  You know, like all the sci-fi over here and the romances over there, and self help in the corner, and children’s books in the back.  They had one wall where they had all the classics.  By classics, I mean all those books you were supposed to read in high school, the books that were on summer reading lists, stuff you should have before you went to college.  I really liked that wall.  There were a few books that I suffered through, but then there were so many I had yet to read.  I decided that I was going to work my way through that wall. 

I never did.  I didn’t even start with book one.  Back then I was heavily into the romance genre, and I still am, but I couldn’t see myself putting down a light-hearted useless book to pick up some serious intellectual reading.  Reading is supposed to be relaxing, a way to unwind and to escape to some fantasy land.  Who wants to do school type reading?

Maybe it’s because I’m getting on in years (hahaha) but suddenly I have that same desire to go back and read all the books I should have read, and re-read the books I did but didn’t do proper justice.  I did read a lot of Shakespeare, but I also did quite a bit of Cliff’s Notes just trying to cram in time for an exam.  Some books I gave up on because they escaped me:  Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy.  Maybe now I’m of the right mindset to understand them. 

I have comprised a list of 62 novels/books/collected works/poetry/whatever considered to be classic.  I know that I might have left something important off the list, but I didn’t want to spend a year trying to compile the perfect list.  If I’ve forgotten something, let me know and when I come back for part two, I’ll be sure to scoop it up.  I figure I’m going to be having a lot of time on my hands very soon, and what better way to while away the hours than between the pages of a good book.

Although I’m probably wasting my breath, but if anybody wants to join me in this journey, let us do this together.  We can read the same book and discuss what we love/hate about it.  Even though I’m into movie watching and all that, I feel like our society is slowly degrading because nobody seems to read anymore.  I do not mean the classics, necessarily, just anything.  It is amazing to me how many people out there that don’t read at all.  Anything, not even a comic book. 

I am greatly disturbed by people who do not read and write well.  How do you get on in life?

Anyway, here’s my list.  Naturally, I will be blogging my life away, commenting on everything.  They say the best way to become a good writer is to become a good reader.  Let’s learn how to read together.

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5. Antigone by Sophocles
6. Arabian Nights by Antony Galland
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9. Colour Purple by Alice Walker
10. Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
11. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
12. Crucible by Arthur Miller
13. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
14. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
15. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
16. Dracula by Bram Stoker
17. Emma by Jane Austen
18. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
19. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
20. Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
21. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
22. Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
24. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
25. Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
26. Iliad by Homer
27. Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
28. Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
29. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
30. King Lear by William Shakespeare
31. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
32. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
33. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
34. Lord of the Rings (the trilogy) by J.R.R. Tolkien
35. M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang
36. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
37. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
38. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
39. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
40. Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Hall
41. My Antonia by Willa Cather
42. Night by Elie Wiesel
43. Odyssey by Homer
44. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
45. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
46. Othello by William Shakespeare
47. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
48. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
49. Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
50. Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
51. Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
52. Stranger by Albert Camus
53. Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
54. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
55. Tartuffe by Moliere
56. Tempest by William Shakespeare
57. Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
58. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
59. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
60. Turn of the Screw by Henry James
61. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
62. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte